3/20/2013

Clown with a Frown

Brazil’s political system looked like a bit of a three-ring
circus when a clown was elected to Congress in 2010. Grumpy, aka Francisco
Oliveira Silva, reportedly took over 1.3 million votes—nearly double the tally
received by the runner up—and rode the clown car all the way to public office.
Grumpy made quite a farce of his campaign, running with signs and a YouTube
campaign that read, “It can’t get any worse.” Grumpy, regardless of all his
shenanigans, inadvertently showed what a clown could contribute to society
thanks to his ability to make people laugh through stupid, selfless humour.

The production of Selton Mello’s The Clown, which opens the CFI’s 17th annual Latin
American Film Festival this Thursday, predates Grumpy’s hijinks, but it offers
another tale from Brazil about a clown finding his place in the world by having
the last laugh. The film, Brazil’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film in
the most recent Oscar race, offers a warm, upbeat opener to the festival. Mello—who
directed and co-wrote the film—stars as Benjamin, a life-long performer who
works as a clown in his father’s circus. Hamming it up under the alias of
Mongrel, Benjamin joins his father, alias Thoroughbred, in making people laugh
night after night.

Mello introduces the clown as a born performer. Going over
the usual script with his father, and then farting and riffing before the crowd
during the show, Benjamin seems to love providing relief for the famers. Benjamin,
however, is one of those sad and depressed clowns that seem to be a fixture of
international art cinema. He smiles only when performing.

It’s odd than Benjamin is a clown with a frown when he
brings so much laughter to others. His circus even notes the irony of his
situation, as it provides escapism to the masses under the banner of Circa
Esperança, which translates as Circus of Hope. There’s little hope for Benjamin
as he dreams of a life of smiles and chuckles, but then spends most of his time
being dogged by shady politicians and needy comrades.

The Clown makes a
transformative journey out of Benjamin’s personal struggles with materialism,
economic hardship, and other peoples’ definition of success. Benjamin’s desire,
strangely, is embodied in a dream of earning an electric fan for his tent. The
idea is put in his head by a curvaceous co-worker, who makes the off-collar
remark as Benjamin puts on his camouflage before the show and make-up rolls
down his face in sweaty dribbles. Marked by a desire to have something physical
to denote his success, Benjamin is blind to the wealth of camaraderie at Circa
Esperança.

Benjamin’s father tries to woo him with some strange advice.
Thoroughbred repeats to his son several times, “Cats drink milk, mice eat
cheese, and I’m a clown.” Thoroughbred’s advice makes little sense, since cats
are lactose intolerant and mice shouldn’t each such fatty food. The father, in
a way, solicits the kind of mentality that acts as his son’s downfall: Benjamin
has an idea of how things should be, but he lacks a sense of how things really
are.

The Clown offers a
series of episodic moments in which Benjamin travels the countryside and tries
to reconcile his own ambitions with society’s expectations. Sometimes with
friends, sometimes alone, Benjamin’s wanderings allow him to encounter all
sorts of working class citizens in the rural villages through which the circus
travels—The Clown never sees the
sunny beaches of Rio. Throughout Benjamin’s odyssey, he is watched over by the
circus’s smallest performer, Guilhermina (Larissa Manuela). Guilhermina, an
orphan, loves Benjamin’s charade and she watches his performance as Mongrel
with a child’s wide-eyed innocence. Benjamin sees his protégé as a younger
version of himself that is uncorrupted by the pesky cravings of objects and
desire. (Guilhermina’s performances tend to focus on spiritual pleasures.) Benjamin
perhaps sees in Guilhermina a version of his own idealism and early love for
the circus (mice and cheese, as his father would say), and The Clown offers an unabashedly feel good tale as the clown looks
into the child’s eyes and sees the nobility in being a performer.

Some of The Clown’s
recitals and road-trips are a bit too on the nose with how they inject a George
Bailey-ish attempt to turn the clown’s frown upside-down, and many of the
circus’s performances are so bizarrely nationalistic that one can’t help but
notice the modesty of the morale. The thinness of the subtext, however, usually
makes its subjects look like simpletons. Mello’s staging of the film is often
awkward, as performers appear in random placements within the shot, often
remaining fixed in place as if they’re unsure what to do—although one expects a
film to be awkward if it’s about a humourist who can’t laugh at his own jokes.
Mello lets the troupe laugh and enjoy their poverty, though, so The Clown provides an amusing, if
slight, look at how one learns to define success through family and friends,
rather than through money and material wealth.

Moviegoers hoping that this trip to Brazil might bring a
return to City of God could find
themselves a bit disappointed, but The
Clown is a sedated, celebratory offering voiced in the pared-down
minimalism that led many to find an appetite for Brazilian cinema in the first
place. My former Brazilian film prof is surely grinning ear-to-ear thanks to
the film’s down-to-earth characterization of this diverse nation. While I struggled
to share such an appreciation for the aesthetics of hunger during my
twelve-week immersion in Brazilian cinema, I couldn’t help but crack a smile
during The Clown’s droll, humble
journey. Brought to life by a rousingly carnivalesque score and a warm sepia-tinged
lensing, The Clown is a notable
comedy from a country whose international success tend to offer darkness and
destitution. The Clown does justice
to the provincials Benjamin entertains, for as Mello tours the circus around
Brazil’s rural regions, the film gives a light-hearted and humble hat tip to
Brazil’s working class. If a clown can rise to public office, he can surely
find pleasure in bringing smiles to the faces of his friends and neighbours.

Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

The Clown opens the Canadian Film
Institute's Latin American Film Festival on Thursday, March 21 at 7:00
pm in the auditorium of Library and Archives Canada.